(Online Delivery) SharePoint Online Site Designing - Creating Effective and Efficient SharePoint Sites with No Coding

This course is designed for both the SharePoint Administrator and SharePoint owner to broaden their use and vision of SharePoint.  The course focuses on little known features and best practices that will allow users to use the environment to its fullest potential.

Prerequisites: 

Experience with SharePoint Online.  Attendees should understand and be able to configure SharePoint Lists, Libraries and site features.  Attendees should have experience with creating and customizing pages.

While this course does NOT require knowledge of PowerShell or JSON coding/scripts, attendees will discuss and work with an example of adding a JSON statement to a list/library.

Module One - Understanding the importance of naming within the SharePoint environment

This first module will identify some of the pitfalls with SharePoint when owners/administrators rush to establish their environments.  Attendees will review several SharePoint topologies from the perspective of the USER and discuss whether:

• Would the current structure confuse the user
• Would the structure be able to provide the “THREE CLICK RULE” for users in the environment
• Is the structure such that it can be easily expanded or collapsed?

Activity: Scenario based on SharePoint topology and the use of hub sites. Attendees will create a hub and spoke environment and cascade elements from the HUB to other sites and site objects.

Module Two - Enabling features for enhanced proficiency

Within SharePoint there exists several features that are often overlooked.  These features include:

• Content Types
• Document set contents types
• The Content Organizer and content routing rules
• Lookup features

Each of these features, will allow owners and administrators to establish both control and consistency across their sites.  These features will make it easier for users to avoid losing documents, input data and control where information rests.

Activities:

• Creating a document set content type.  Discussions related to the benefits of using the feature
• Enabling and using the Content Organizer.  Configuring routing rules for users
• Creating lists and using the lookup feature.

Module Three - Designing the landing page/initial interface

One of the most impactful concepts when working with SharePoint is what the users will “SEE” on the first page.  The questions should be asked:

• Will the users understand the landing page
• Will the landing page allow them to navigate to their content quickly
• Does the landing page signal the purpose of the site and the contents within it
• The importance of choosing the ‘right’ web parts on the home page of the site

Activities:

• Modify the home page of a SharePoint site with ‘user’ friendly navigation options
• Adding ‘help’ from the home page to ‘how’ libraries

Module Four - Limiting duplicate information

This module may solve the “storage” dilemma that many administrators and/or owners encounter within their SharePoint environment.  During this module attendees will discuss and then implement features such as:

• Calendar rollups (one master SharePoint calendar that displays total events from a group of other calendars)
• Extending the functionality of the Content Organizer to route based on mandatory fields
• Using Form linking from the Communication site to the Team site

Activities:

Attendees will create a master calendar overlay or rollup and see how it allows users to have a high-level overview of all SharePoint events from a group of lower-level calendars.  Attendees will also create several lists, with data and then use the lookup feature(s) to reduce duplication and enhance performance.

Finally for the activities in this module, attendees will enable the Content organizer, then create rules to route to specific departments/managers based on required metadata fields.  It will be suggested that ALERTS and Automatic rules be established to advise managers that new documents have arrived.

OPTIONAL IF TIME PERMITS:  Attendees will create a grouped view based upon metadata to allow users to navigate to their content more quickly.

Module Five - Creating a user specific environment

Within the SharePoint technology, many users have difficulty searching, finding, retrieving and working with documents.  With some of the features that an owner or administrator can configure the user(s) will find working in the environment is enhanced.

SharePoint owners and administrators will discuss the value of training users on their PERSONAL views as well as providing them a SharePoint page that lists their relative/recent document interactions.

Activities:

• Attendees will create a personal view on a list or a library.
• Attendees will use the PSR tool to create a ‘how to’ manual for users and post in on HOW/Learning SharePoint page.
• Attendees will create a SharePoint page and add the Relevant documents web part to the page.  Once on the page they will configure it for the amount of data and type of data to be displayed.  They will then modify the home page so users can find the page very quickly.